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 Irish Lesbian
Writer Nuala O'Faolain Dies
by The Associated Press
Posted: May 12, 2008 - 11:00 am ET
(Dublin) Nuala O'Faolain - a
journalist and feminist who gained international fame with her
outspoken 1996 memoir "Are You Somebody?'' - has died of
lung cancer, weeks after revealing her illness on state radio.
She was 68.
She died Friday at a hospice in
south Dublin and will be cremated Tuesday after a Catholic
Mass, her family said.
O'Faolain emphasized during her
April 12 radio interview that she had no faith in the
afterlife, and instead rued the imminent loss of her
lifetime's accrual of education, friends and experience.
O'Faolain, who was a University
College Dublin lecturer in literature before becoming one of
Ireland's best-known journalists, said the lung cancer had
spread to her liver, and brain tumours had ruined her ability
to concentrate.
``Beauty means nothing to me
anymore. I tried to read (Marcel) Proust again recently, but
it has gone _ the magic has gone. It amazed me how quickly my
life turned black,'' she said in the wide-ranging, deeply
reflective interview with state radio RTE.
The broadcast inspired a
national discussion about how Ireland cares for its terminally
ill and a wave of sympathy for O'Faolain over her
uncompromising account of her desolation.
O'Faolain dismissed the idea of
Heaven awaiting her. ``I can't be consoled by the mention of
God. I wish everyone comfort for those who believe, but I
cannot,'' she said. ``To me it's meaningless.''
O'Faolain said she was consoled
only by the knowledge that so many other people died in much
more horrific circumstances.
``In my time, which is mostly
the 20th century, people have died horribly in Auschwitz, in
Darfur, or are dying of starvation or dying multiply raped in
the Congo ... horribly like that. I think how comfortably I am
dying, I have friends and family, I am in this wonderful
country, I have money,'' she said.
``There is nothing much wrong
with me, except I am dying.''
O'Faolain worked as a
television producer and reporter for the British Broadcasting
Corp. and RTE, and gained a national readership as an Irish
Times columnist starting in the mid-1980s.
She became a bestselling author
on both sides of the Atlantic in 1996 with the publication of
``Are You Somebody?'' It was initially intended to be a
collection of her Irish Times columns, but evolved into an
unusually intimate, even risque memoir.
In it, she recounted her tough
family upbringing with a philandering father and alcoholic
mother, descent into her own alcohol abuse, and a lifetime
struggle to attain professional, social and sexual fulfilment.
The book, which initially had a
print run of just 1,500 copies, touched a particular nerve
among adult female readers because of its exploration of the
soul-searching of a middle-aged, unmarried, childless woman.
It caused headlines at home because of her candid admission to
having a lengthy lesbian affair with a prominent Irish
journalist, later identified as Northern Irish civil rights
activist Nell McCafferty.
The memoir's U.S. popularity
transformed O'Faolain into a celebrity winner of hefty book
advances. She published three more books: the novel ``My Dream
of You'' in 2001, a second volume of memoirs titled ``Almost
There'' in 2003, and the biography ``The Story of Chicago
May'' in 2005.
In February, O'Faolain suffered
partial loss of movement on one side after working out in a
New York gym. Later that day, she recalled in her RTE
interview, a doctor told her she had inoperable cancer.
O'Faolain declined chemotherapy
after a few emotionally agonizing sessions and instead
travelled Europe with the help of close friends until the
disease confined her to a nursing home.
At the time of her cancer
diagnosis, she had been offering weekly RTE radio commentary
on the U.S. presidential race from her second home in New York
City.
O'Faolain had several longtime
relationships, with McCafferty and with prominent male artists
and intellectuals, but never married or had children, a
frequent theme in her writing. She is survived by five sisters
and a brother. Two other brothers predeceased her.
©365Gay.com 2008
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